"Unexpected Song": Lauren Kennedy Stars in Tell Me On a Sunday Starting Aug. 18

By Andrew Gans
18 Aug 2010

Lauren Kennedy
Lauren Kennedy

Lauren Kennedy, most recently seen Off-Broadway in the new musical Vanities, plays an English woman looking for love in America in the Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy series production of Tell Me On a Sunday.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber song cycle plays the Kennedy Theatre in Raleigh, NC, Aug. 18-29 and The Kennedy Campbell Theatre at Barton College in Wilson, NC, Sept. 1-5. Matthew-Jason Willis directs the one-woman musical.

Tell Me On a Sunday features music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Don Black. Richard Maltby, Jr. worked with Black to revise the lyrics for the show's Broadway debut.

Originally produced as a record album starring English musical theatre star Marti Webb, "Tell Me On a Sunday" was combined with Lloyd Webber's "Variations" to form Song and Dance, a two-act concert for the London theatre. Marti Webb and Wayne Sleep starred in the initial London mounting. The show, in a revised form, opened on Broadway in 1985 starring Bernadette Peters, who won a Tony Award for her performance. Betty Buckley succeeded Peters in the role on Broadway. Others who have sung the score, which includes such tunes as "Tell Me On a Sunday," "Unexpected Song," "Take That Look Off Your Face" and "Come Back with the Same Look in Your Eyes," include Lulu, Sarah Brightman, Liz Robertson, Gemma Craven and Alice Ripley, the latter at the Kennedy Center. A revised version was later seen in London starring Denise Van Outen.

Lauren Kennedy was most recently seen on the Broadway stage as the Lady of the Lake in the Tony-winning musical Spamalot. She covered the role of Daisy Hilton in the Broadway production of Side Show and also appeared in the New York companies of Sunset Boulevard and Les Misérables. Kennedy starred in The Rhythm Club and was also a part of the early incarnations of Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years, playing the role that would be played Off-Broadway by Sherie Rene Scott, when Kennedy crossed the Atlantic to star in the National Theatre's revival of South Pacific. Kennedy also appeared in The Ten Commandments: The Spectacle Musical and Off-Broadway's Vanities, and her solo recordings are titled "The Songs of Jason Robert Brown" and "Here and Now."

Shows take place at the Kennedy Theatre inside the Progress Energy Center for the Performing Arts in Raleigh, NC. For tickets call (866) 811-4111 or visit the Hot Summer Nights at the Kennedy website www.hotsummernightsatthekennedy.org.